


mama, can I get another amen?

by sleepyMoritz (Catherss)



Category: Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Mutants, Alternate Universe - Prison, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Mutant Powers, Sharing a Bed, Teen Romance, Torture, Violence, and they were roommates!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 08:40:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14891279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catherss/pseuds/sleepyMoritz
Summary: Before the headteacher of Essex’s Mutant Re-education Centre even opens the door, Matt knows he’s got a roommate.





	mama, can I get another amen?

**Author's Note:**

> Beta read by the lovely pogopop and tilthewheelsfalloff. Title from Panic! at the Disco's Say Amen (Saturday Night).
> 
> So, you don't need to have watched Deadpool 2 to get this, but if you're militantly anti-spoilers and haven't seen it, then don't read. But you should get everything if you haven't see the film since I only really lift the central location for this fic (which is a location that shows up, like, twice in the actual film and I've kind of just done whatever I wanted with), the villain & his ethos (who I've renamed because no clue what he's actually called and Google doesn't seem to know either), and some repeating words. 
> 
> There's also a few references to the wider mutant goings on, but they're so brief it doesn't really matter if you don't know anything about the X-Men.
> 
> TW for super brief internalised ableism, and please do heed the tags - this is sort of teetering on the edge of a darkfic.

 

Before the headteacher of Essex’s Mutant Re-education Centre even opens the door, Matt knows he’s got a roommate.

“Franklin Nelson.” Saxon introduces the boy in Matt’s new bedroom with obvious contempt, and Matt wonders what Franklin did to get on his shit list.

Franklin stands, his heart kicking up a notch in what Matt can only assume is uncertainty and fear - he’s a Pavlovian dog, Matt thinks. Sees Saxon and feels fear. “Hello,” Franklin says timidly. Holds out his hand automatically, then notices Matt’s cane and drops it to his side.

Matt smiles tightly and holds his hand out as if that whole thing hadn’t happened. “Matt Murdock,” he says. Franklin smells of books and like everyone else who Saxon and Matt passed in the halls on their way to the dorms. They all smell the same here, but Matt’s used to identifying people based on individual sweat and tiny signifiers like the ink type on the side of their hand from where it’s dragged through fresh script, the sound of their body moving through space. He’s got a good idea of how big and tall people are, but faces are just a useless heat map of muscles and hair.

Saxon claps his hands, the sound like a gunshot in the odd silence that follows their handshake. He’s slimy man (menthol, musky newspapers, shoe shining grease and under washed clothes, and sounds like there’s something wrong with his right leg because he favours the left ever so slightly; Matt can hear a creaking in his ankle) who introduced him to the MRC with a pride that churned Matt’s stomach. “Franklin, I’ll leave you to catch Matthew up to speed. I’m sure he’ll also read your timetable to you.”

“Sure,” Franklin agrees, muscles in his neck working as he looks between them.

Saxon bids his leave and then it’s just the two of them. Franklin lets out a sigh. “Call me Foggy, please.”

Matt tilts his head. “Why?”

“It’s my name. He just calls me Franklin cause I hate it.”

Matt hums and shrugs his shoulders up to his ears. “Sure, whatever.”

“Franklin just sounds like a forty-five year old accountant,” he elaborates. “And I’m too young for death by being boring.”

Matt’s face twitches into a smile. “Okay,” he says. He rolls his shoulders, aching from the weight of the bag and the last of growing pains, and dumps his duffle bag on his bed, the springs squeaking in a way that’ll he’ll learn to ignore eventually. He’s just glad he won’t have to pretend to not have… _abilities_ anymore.

“Oh, I— I made your bed for you. I figured you might be tired.” Blood rises in Foggy’s cheeks, capillaries widening and blood coming minuely closer.

“Thank you,” he says mildly, electing not to turn and face the other boy. He’s giving off _vibes_ and Matt doesn’t want to lead him on. “I appreciate that.”

“Need me to describe where anything is?” Foggy asks, slumping onto his own creaking mattress. Matt can hear him picking at his skin.

“No, I’m good,” he says. Glad that Foggy didn’t just go ahead and try some misguided attempt at helping without asking first, he adds, “Thanks, though.”

If Foggy’s surprised at the ease at which Matt moves about, nothing betrays it. He begins unpacking, taking his thrift shop hand-me-down belongings out of the bag and organising them in the drawers of a large desk that covers the far side of the room. On the other side is a wardrobe he seems to share with Foggy, and one half is indeed neatly sectioned off with empty hangers, which he begins to put shirts and Braille labels on.

“You knew I was coming, then,” Matt says conversationally after more than a few moments of bad, awkward silence (but not real silence - Matt hasn't heard that in years - no, it’s silence where electricity hums through cables and lighting filaments, where pipes three rooms over moan and creak as hot water fills them, where water drips from the gutter outside, the trees rustle, the kids breathe or laugh or talk or moan or make skin-on-skin noises; a plane passes overhead, and the massive Lake Champlain not far from the MRC laps against a rocky, shifting shore.)

“Yeah, I was was told yesterday I’d be getting a roommate. Said you were in an emergency housing situation, so that’s why you’re starting halfway through a term.”

Matt tilts his head back and laughs. “Emergency, right.”

Foggy’s breath intake sharpens for a moment before he mumbles, “So... why’re you here?”

Matt slows what he’s doing whilst he thinks. He’s here because he’s a fucking moron, but that’s not really what Foggy’s asking. “Well... They think I’m a mutant.”

“... They _think_?”

“I’m probably not.” Matt shrugs. “I don’t really know. But that is why I’m here. Why we’re all here.”

“Yeah, but you gotta do something more than just _be_ a mutant to get here,” he replies reasonably. “Not all mutants end up in a place like this.”

“What, you want my life story or something?”

“No,” Foggy says. “I was just asking.”

Matt sighs and runs his tongue over his teeth. He wants to brush them and take a shower; it’s been a _long_ couple of days and they stick to him like a film of grime. “I can hear and smell really well.”

“That’s it? That’s your mutation?” he asks incredulously.

“ _Really_ well,” Matt says. “What about you?”

“It’s kind of lame, actually,” he says. “I know things.”

Matt frowns and carries on unpacking, though he’s almost done given how he owns next to nothing. “You’re asking if enhanced senses are ‘it’ and your powers are... what, eclectic memory?”

“Eidetic,” Foggy corrects. “Though I do basically have that. It’s more like knowing where things or people are, knowing what’ll end in death and destruction,” he says cheerfully, jokingly. “Stuff like that.”

Matt hums and sits on his bed, shoves his duffle bag under it. “That is pretty cool,” he admits, pulling out his timetable from his pocket and unfolding it. He tries to read it by touch, but he’s way too tired, and eventually he just sighs in irritation and asks Foggy to read it out to him. Foggy pauses after he takes it, worrying the cheap printer stock paper between his thumb and index finger.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but...”

“No, I wasn’t always blind,” Matt reels off. “And my remaining four senses compensate for the difference for a sort of... 360 degree understanding of space.”

“Huh.” Foggy stops his fidgeting. “So can you see, at all?”

Matt’s surprised by the question. “No, I’m NLP— No Light Perception. But I understand where things are around me. If it helps, think of it like a mix between a bat’s echolocation and a bloodhound’s nose, but it’s not really anything like that.”

“That’s a lot to get your head around,” Foggy mutters.

“Yeah, I know. I am blind, though,” Matt says with a force he doesn’t mean.

“Okay…? Never said you weren’t.”

“I just-- when people find out.” Matt clears his throat. “They don’t believe that I really _am_ blind.”

Foggy pauses, tilts his head. Matt’s pretty sure he’s pulling some sort of a face, but it’s not at all worth trying to figure out expression most of the time. Usually, he can get the important bits via inflection and other physiological giveaways. “Really? But I mean… you can’t use screens, or read signs, stuff like that, right?”

Matt nods, breathing a sigh of relief that he got it. “Yeah, exactly. I can’t.”

“So… Why the cane?”

Matt picks up his cane, letting its comforting weight settle in his palm. “The cane is because I’m blind enough that I can’t fake being sighted, and it’s not like you want people to know there’s something not right about you in this world.” It had occurred to him in the past to try and fake it, but he was always paranoid he’d bump into someone that he knew. Plus, part of him knew that it was just him being internally ableist that even made him entertain the thought, so he refused partially on principle for fear it’d develop into something worse.

“There’s nothing--” Foggy says clumsily. “There’s nothing not right about you. Don’t let Saxon’s bullshit get to you.”

“Oh, man,” Matt chuckles, grinning toothily and stretching back on his bed, hands behind his head and one foot tucked neatly over the other. “There’s _way_ more not right about me than whatever Saxon is spewing, I promise you.”

 

* * *

 

 

The next day Matt has counselling. He’s done this rodeo before - multiple times - but this is nothing like what he’s experienced in the past.

His therapy through his blindness used to be about accepting that he was disabled now, that he should accept that about himself, mixed with O&M that taught him how to move through the world and exist within it. His counselling at the orphanage was about accepting grief and anger and letting it go (which is, as far as Matt’s concerned, utter bullshit - anger has kept him alive this long). But _this_ is a whole other breed of thing, with greasy undertones to breed self-hate and doubt, and Matt can tell instantly why Foggy had told him to just lie.

The counsellor, who is a middle aged woman (menopausal hot flushes, chemical perfume mixed with very faint lavender which is perhaps some sort of sleep aid, cheap ballpoint pens and vinegar salad dressing. Has a dog or two and probably a baby grandchild; talcum powder, baby oil, the of shit and vomit that doesn’t really leave people who look after babies) called Theresa firstly asks him to introduce himself, and he knows that’s a test, so he just says, “I’m Matt Murdock.”

“Can you tell me a little about yourself?”

He scuffs a foot against the carpeted ground. “I’m seventeen,” he begins. “I want to be a lawyer. I like jazz, classical music, but I don’t mind pop, folk and old school country. And I’m a Libra,” he adds after a beat, mostly because he finds it funny.

“Anything else?” she prods.

He smiles benignly. He knows what she wants him to say, but his benign response is borne out of habit, too. He’s never had a problem with authority who doesn’t have a problem with him. “No, I think that’s everything pertinent.”

“Pertinent, good word,” she says condescendingly. Matt wants to kick something. “Do you read?”

 _I’m blind, not illiterate_ , he thinks. “Yes, I read.”

“Read what?”

“Books,” Matt says with a shrug. “Whatever I can get from the library.”

She nods and writes something down, the sharp smell of ink rolling off the paper of her notebook. “Why do you like to read?”

“Why does anyone?”

“Well, a lot of people do it for escapism.”

“I don’t do it for that. My life is fine.” He knows he sounds like a petulant teenager, but damnit, he is a petulant teenager and he’s _not throwing her a bone_.

She hums thoughtfully, smacks her lips slathered in lipstick. Matt hadn’t known what the different smells of makeup meant until a girl from a blind youths group whose vision was on a steadfast decline invited him back to hers, and she’d held each tube or pot or palette out to him to touch and smell (and, in the case of the mascara, accidentally taste - he’d gotten it on his top lip and licked it off without thinking). If he concentrated, he could usually tell if someone was wearing makeup or not. Theresa was, and quite a bit of it, too. “Do you consider yourself a mutant?”

He’s so, so tempted to call himself a _homo superior_ , but he doesn’t think it’ll go over well, so he just shrugs. “I guess.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that when you introduced yourself?”

“Well, surely it doesn’t matter,” Matt says.

“Here, we believe it does matter. Being a mutant is a variation on what’s normal, on God’s humankind. It is a fatal flaw.” She says it calmly, but her heart betrays her - a slight speed up that sometimes means lying, but Matt can just sense otherwise. She’s _into_ it, into the whole idea of it, and really thinks it works.

Matt tilts his head. His brain latches onto the idea. “It’s a flaw you can’t get rid of.”

“True,” she says mildly. “But you can be trained not to use it; it is only a sin to act upon deviance, not to have an... inclination for it.”

Matt wants to say that not using his abilities would be like blinding him all over again. It’d strip him of another large chunk of his independence, and he’d have to learn the world all over again. He could do it, because he never backs down from a fight, but it’d still _suck_. “I can’t just turn off my abilities,” he says instead. “I’m using them all the time.”

“You are?” Theresa says and sounds alarmed. _Shit_. Bad move, Matt.

“Well, not much,” he tries to say. “But... Yeah.”

“How would you describe your powers?”

“I’m just good at hearing and smelling,” he says.

Rustling paper noises; freshly printed notes. His file. “I was told that you’re also resistant to pain and highly agile.”

“First bit’s just the Catholicism,” he says with a smirk.

“And the second?”

“Training.”

And that doesn’t alarm her as much as he suspected it would. Matt has the realisation that he cannot be the only mutant kid turned child soldier; there may even be another one in the MRC.

(He doesn’t like the phrase child soldier because he doesn’t consider himself a child, and he doesn’t consider himself a soldier, but there was little else he could argue Stick was training him for it not that. He isn’t sure how he feels about all of it just yet. He figures he’ll know when it actually matters.)

 

* * *

 

 

Later on the same day is an evening assembly, which apparently happens usually every day but generally at the whim of how righteous Saxon feels at any given time. Sitting in the assembly hall almost makes him gag with the stench of singed hair and sweat, swimming amongst a nauseating soup of cooking smells from the kitchen adjacent. It’s probably some sort of nondescript stew for dinner (beef, chicken stock, carrots, onions), bubbling away in a large-sounding pan like a potion in a cauldron. Assemblies are, Matt finds very quickly, not at all anything like what he’d experienced at St. Agnes or high school.

A quivering girl sits in the chair on the stage in front of rows of reluctantly attentive children, the smell of her sweat acrid with fear. Saxon circles her, his heartbeat picking up. He’s enjoying this, Matt realises. He’s _getting off_ on it.

“Is not God in the height of heaven? Look also at the distant stars, how high they are! You say, ‘What does God know? Can He judge through the thick darkness?” he says, doing up the last strap over her legs. The machine next to her hums with overcharged electricity above normal domestic power. It makes the hairs on Matt’s neck stick up.

Matt whispers, distressed and mind reeling. “What’s happening?”

“He’s going to electrocute her,” Foggy says back. He’s sweating all over. He hates this. They both do.

“In public? _Here_?”

“It’s supposed to - I don’t know - shame us into being—“ Foggy cuts himself off, obviously distressed.

“ _Normal_ ,” Matt finishes.

Saxon carries on, his voice burning with incredible, frightening power, unlike any pastor or priest Matt has ever experienced. “Clouds are a hiding place for Him, so that He cannot see; And He walks on the vault of heaven.’”

“What’s that quote?” Matt asked. “I know it’s the Bible, but—“

“I dunno. He always says it though. We have to be quiet,” Foggy hisses, but not because he wants to listen, but because he’s scared of the consequences if he doesn’t.

“Will you keep to the ancient path which wicked men have trod, who were snatched away before their time, whose foundations were washed away by a river? The righteous see and are glad, and the innocent mock them. Yield now and be at peace with Him; thereby good will come to you. Receive instruction from His mouth and establish His words in your heart. If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored; if you remove unrighteousness far from your tent, and place your gold in the dust, then the Almighty will be your gold and silver to you.”

Matt hears him flick switches and the machine’s humming becomes high and whining. A kid a few rows over retches but doesn’t vomit and another is sniffing back tears; a strangled hush falls over them like a fog, weaving into their heads. Matt itches, his heart hammering against his ribs. The girl lets out a frightened whimper, and Matt hears her trembling against the leather of the contraption she’s strapped into. Saxon’s voice booms through the quiet, washing over Matt and making his head spin.

“For then you will delight in the Almighty and lift up your face to God. You will pray to Him, and He will hear you; and you will pay your vows. You will also decree a thing, and it will be established for you; and light will shine on your ways. When you are cast down, you will speak with confidence, and the humble person He will save,” Saxon says, then takes a half-step back, his heart loud, clear, and fast. “He will deliver one who is not innocent, declaring, ‘Blessed are the wicked who are healed by my hands’.”

Saxon flicks the switch and the girl convulses, her muscles working involuntary, a cry ripping from her throat. Matt’s urge to do something hits a critical mass; he leaps up and yells, “Let her go!”

Foggy grabs Matt by his shirt and tries to drag him back down, but Matt’s already left his place and is sprinting down the middle towards the stage, anger forcing him forward. The kids gasp and whisper, but Matt homes in instead on what’s in front of him, cutting out unnecessary stimuli. As he reaches the steps and leaps up, he’s tackled to the ground by someone - a woman with  half a foot on him who tries to get him prone with his hands behind his back. Matt wriggles out and kicks her across the face, and another two people barrel into his senses. He puts up a good fight, but he’s a skinny, hungry teenager, and they’re adult men with arms twice as thick as his; Matt ends up on the ground on his back, arms out to either side. He smells burnt hair and skin, blood bursting into the air, his from a wound on his cheek and the back of his head, and the girl’s, from where he doesn’t know.

Saxon looms over him, his body thrumming at this new development. The girl is lax in her seat, her heart slowed into unconsciousness. Saxon’s lips smack as they pull back into a snarl. “Murdock,” he says.

Matt stops writhing and just lies back, panting. Another hushed silence has fallen. “Sir,” he replies, with as much cold contempt as he can muster.

Saxon snorts softly. “Take him to isolation,” he instructs the two burly men. “I will deal with him later.”

“Yessir,” one of the men replies. Matt’s then lifted up and dragged out of the hall, teenagers muttering in his wake. He hears Saxon scorn him in front of his unwillingly rapt audience, tells them all that he’ll pay for what he’s just done. Matt’d like to see him try. If Stick taught him anything, it’s that physical pain he can deal with.

Matt is taken down into the basement, where he can smell mould in the damp air. He can tell without concentrating that there’s people down here; once he’s thrown into a dank cell and the heavy door slides shut behind him, he really reaches out his senses. There’s five heartbeats lined up next to him, all of them steady and normal. He can smell relaxed male and female sweat (he’s still not sure what exactly makes them smell different, but they for sure do), though all of them are wearing the same deodorant, and he’s not entirely sure if one of the kids is male or female, so they might be younger or have some sort of hormone imbalance. Wouldn’t be the first time Matt was caught out by it. Two of them have long hair that rustles against their shoulders, and one of them is menstruating. They smell like they’ve eaten the same food and sound like they ate it at the same time. One of them sneezes and sniffles; another paces and mutters under their breath. None of the information he gathers is useful, so he says, hesitantly, “hello?”

Nothing back. His voice echoes in the cell, muted and unsettling. He thinks that if he was normal, it’d probably be one of those silences that made people go mad.

“Hello?” he repeats, louder. Nothing back, again. He sits on his bed, then does anxious sit ups until he feels himself about to break out into a sweat, then sits again and listens for a while longer. The room does have some impressive soundproofing, admittedly - he can just tell there’s guards outside the block of cells, but beyond that is nothingness intercut with the occasional muffled loud noise. The smell of the mould is getting up his nose, making it increasingly difficult to discern what he’s sensing.

Matt can’t sense any kind of lightbulb either, so he assumes he’s in darkness. It’s the kind of tactic that he’s pretty sure is illegal, but if there’s anything the government cares less about than mutants, it’s mutant kids. He eventually dozes off on the thin cot, sticking one hand up his button-down shirt and the other down the leg of his pants so they don’t have to touch the irritatingly course blankets. Eventually, the door to the block of cells clicks and opens. Footsteps up to his cell, and the heavy metal door opening is thunderously loud, enough to make him wince and cover his ears. Sounds and smells flood in, but all of them hone in to Saxon, who stands at the entrance.

“Matthew,” Saxon says, and it’s all a power play.

“Mister,” Matt says, lowering his hands as he sits up. He’d call Saxon by his first name if he knew it, but Mister seems sufficiently juvenile, like he’s a preschool teacher.

Saxon speaks patiently, calmly, but Matt can sense the vibrating anger, the thrumming heartbeat. He’s furious. “You’re new here. You don’t know the rules. So I will tell you this once and only once. You will not get in the way of your peers’ treatment. _Theatre_ ,” he says disdainfully, “like that is not welcome here.”

“Treatment,” Matt parrots with a shake of his head.

“Yes, treatment, Matthew. Treatment that will change their lives for the better - once they let go of the power delusion of being a mutant and accept the body and mind God gave to all humans equally. Tomorrow, you’ll begin your treatment.”

“You mean you’ll electrocute me in front of my peers.”

“Oh, _no_ ,” Saxon says sardonically. “That only works for some. You were trained to be a soldier - I know that much from your therapy session yesterday. No, I think sensory deprivation will humble you far more than simple pain.”

Matt gapes for a moment, then shuts his damn trap and shrugs nonchalantly. “I could always use a little peace and quiet.”

Saxon chuckles. “We’ll see about that.”

 

* * *

 

 

“All clothes in the tray,” says a stern elderly man who pings on his innate _creepy old person_ radar that was, in part, demolished and born again during Stick’s interim in his life. “Behave and I won’t have to taser you.”

Matt does as he’s told, skin crawling as he strips off his clothes, because he can sense that Saxon is there, watching, in the corner. Matt doesn’t know if Saxon knows he can tell he’s there, but regardless, neither of them give themselves away. Once he’s naked, he’s prodded along to a coffin-like thing that smells like water and metal and plastic. A sensory deprivation tank.

“Remember, Matthew,” Saxon begins. Matt would’ve been surprised if he couldn’t hear his breathing change minutely before speaking - he probably intended for Matt to be surprised, so Matt does a sharp head-turn, like he’s only just realising Saxon’s in the room. Downplaying his abilities keeps him flying under the radar. “Blessed are the wicked who are healed by My hands.”

With that, heavy headphones are lifted over his head, which cut out some noise, but not by massive amount; in all, he doubts they’re going to be able to silence everything he can sense. Saxon leaves, the door slamming in his wake. A tight mask is fitted over Matt’s mouth and nose and sterile, warm air begins flowing through. He gets little warning when he’s essentially lifted into the tank and dumped in, and manhandled until he’s lying in a way that satisfies them, then fully submerged. He feels the tank door close and— shit, it’s bad, but not _too_ bad. Smell is basically useless and so is touch, but he can still hear just enough to know he’s not alone in the universe.

Concentrating hard, he can hear white noise filter into the tank from the outside. That cuts what he can hear in half. Then, stunningly loud, white noise explodes into his hearing through the headphones. He convulses and he’s sure his throat works a noise, but he can’t hear it over the snow filling his head. It’s painfully noisy, and his head begins to throb as he chokes back tears.

Fuck. _Fuck_. This is bad. This is _so bad_.

He’s lost, utterly lost, his senses reeling for anything to grab hold of. His heartbeat rises into his ears, thrumming like a rabbit’s; it only serves to panic him further, making him try to wrangle his hands up so he can feel himself or take off the headphones, but this coffin is too small for him to move much at all. He pinches his thigh instead, and he feels nothing. He wonders if there’s some sort of numbing agent in the water or if he’s truly just going insane.

He tries automatically to find voices and patterns in the white noise, but frustratingly finds nothing. His mind feels like it’s slipping in between gears, wandering and useless. Tries to count seconds, but loses track and has to start over three times before he just gives up. He tries to recite the Lord’s Prayer, but he’s interrupted by a bolt of pain shoots that through him, and he’s not sure if it’s phantom until it happens again, stronger, a shock through his body that makes his heart pick up again.

He waits. He expects the pain to come against and it doesn’t. Just as he’s lulled into thinking it might be a once off, it happens again, stronger, making him grunt and jerk, muscles contracting. The cycle repeats at least six times before he loses count, driving him nuts with the uncertainty of it, until he’s suddenly aware of being pulled out of the water, the headphones and mask being stripped off him.

The sensory information that floods in is _unbearable_. It’s like being that nine year old kid again, bandages over his eyes and a brain rewiring itself in ways he couldn’t comprehend. Matt breathes deeply through his mouth and tries to plug his ears, but his hands are ripped away and his mouth covered, forcing him to take in the maelstrom. Through a choked sob, he does: tears blood plaster bricks water plastic metal skin hair burning mould dust cotton rubber copper and electricity breathing heartbeats digestion humming ticking whirring moaning groaning—

Matt tries to curl up on himself, the very air scratching against his skin and wind pipe. Words are being said to him, but it goes in one ear and out the other. He’s dragged out of the tank and lands in a unceremonious heap on the dirty ground, the grime sticking to his wet skin like sandpaper. Someone wrangles some underwear onto him, and then he’s being shoved, stumbling, out of the door.

He can barely make sense of the sea of sounds and smells as they walk, until he’s finally allowed to stop and collapse onto the ground with no one prodding at him to get back up. He groans as a hand is placed on his acne-pocked back.

A voice. A soft warm voice to match a soft warm hand. “Matt?” Foggy says something else, but Matt can barely hear it past the gurgling of his vocal chords.

Matt clicks his tongue and drags himself up onto the bed when he finds it, then curls up on his side and shoves a pillow over his ears. It does nothing to help realistically, but the pressure makes him feel better. Through gritted teeth, he says, “Foggy?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” Foggy responds. Matt grunts at how loud it seems, though Foggy is probably speaking normally.

“Earplugs? Headphones?”

Foggy scrambles to search through his desk, then pushes a pair of contraband earphones into his hands - luckily, it’s the rubber sort that block out noise. Matt shoves them into his ears and mutters a thank you. It barely does anything to help, and all he can do is ride it out as his senses rebalance themselves, becoming accustomed once again to the whirlpool of smells and sounds in the real world.

Eventually, he uncurls, wincing at his aching muscles, more than a bit embarrassed at falling apart in the presence of a guy he met only a few days ago.

“You back?”

“I’m back,” Matt says, voice rough, feeling raw and like a live wire.

“What happened?” Foggy asks.

“Sensory deprivation tank,” he says with a grimace. “They sure are fans of electrocution, huh? Said he wouldn’t and all.”

Foggy’s breath comes out in a rush. Matt removes the earplugs and he sits up, rubbing his left hand over his right arm and feeling grit roll under his palm. His underwear feel gross and smell bad, so they’re yesterday's, not a new pair. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine,” Matt says, standing on wobbly legs. He stumbles over to his drawers and finds a new pair of boxers to wear.

“You look sickly.”

Matt changes with his back to Foggy, who he can tell looks politely away with a noisy swallow. “I’m fine,” he insists. “Just need to sleep.”

He collapses onto his bed again, then immediately gets up to brush away the gritty dirt that comes off his skin and onto the sheets. Foggy says, “Want me to wake you up for dinner?”

Not being able to get rid of enough of the grit, he decides to put on some sweatpants and a long sleeve top. “What day is it?”

“Thursday. You’ve been away almost two days, dude. It’s 3 PM,” Foggy says as Matt pulls on his new clothes. “Have you eaten at all? Had some water?”

“Ate a few hours before I was in the tank,” he says, patience for being conscious quickly running out. “Wake me up for dinner,” he adds before throwing himself onto his bed, drawing his sheets up over his shoulders, and departing as quickly as possible from wakefulness.

 

* * *

 

 

When Matt wakes up again, it’s dawn; the dew on the ground is filtering through a vent above the window, and the dawn chorus is in full swing. Listening, he figures it must be before 5 AM. Foggy breathes softly in the bed opposite, his heart slow and steady, as are all the other heartbeats he can hear after a quick skim of his surroundings, asides one that must be the night warden, and another that is mysteriously fast. Probably a nightmare or someone getting off. He doesn’t tune in enough to find out.

Drawing his senses back inwards, he snaps his fingers once, and is pleased that it sounds normal to him; not overly sensitive or raw. The sound bounces off a new object on the desk - a glass that smells like water. He thankfully drinks almost all of it, then settles back cross-legged to meditate for a while.

He’s pulled out of his thoughts sometime later by their 6:30 AM alarm. Foggy is dragged into consciousness far less gracefully than Matt, and groans, sniffling as he reaches out to silence the alarm.

“Oh, hi,” Foggy says sleepily, nuzzling back into his bed. Matt feels himself smile. “You’re awake.”

“Yeah. Woke up an hour and a bit ago.”

“Mm. You must’ve slept... hours. Math.”

“Fourteen hours,” Matt says, reaching over to his bedside table to put on his glasses. “Guess I needed it.”

“Guess so,” Foggy says with a hum. “I tried to wake you for dinner.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. You told me to fuck off then fell back asleep.”

Matt snickers and stands, stretching, feeling his joints click and muscles stretch pleasantly. “Thank you for the water,” he says, downing the last mouthful.

“Huh? Oh. No problem.” Foggy sniffs thickly and Matt hears his feet land on the ground. “Jesus. I can’t believe that they did that to you.”

“Could be worse,” Matt shrugs, digging in his drawers for jeans, then over to his wardrobe for a shirt. “I’ve had worse,” he lies. “Have they ever— you?”

“Yeah, Matt,” Foggy says gently. “Everyone’s been hurt in this place.”

Matt swallows and wants to reach out to Foggy’s hopeless voice and wrap his warm hands around it. “How?”

“Public electrocution, like the rest.”

“Foggy,” he breathes. He can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt someone as gentle as this boy seems, can’t imagine the twisted brokenness of anyone who’d hurt him for his benign mutation. Who’d want to hurt _any_ of them for their mutations, must of which are barely dangerous in the _right_ hands. “When? Why?”

“What is this, Twenty Questions?” Foggy’s laugh is uneven and nervous. “When I first got here. I told Saxon that he was going to be killed by one of his students.”

Matt’s breath catches. He turns to Foggy, thinking that he totally underestimated him that first meeting and awkward handshake - heart pounding in fear, his ass. “Is that true?”

Foggy shrugs and stands up. “It feels as true as it did when I said it. He’d deserve it,” he says, suddenly venomous.

Matt turns back to his hunt for clothes. He finds a shirt labelled LIGHT BLUE PLAIN and takes it off the hanger. “No one deserves to die. We don’t get to decide that.”

Foggy hums doubtfully. “Well, next time, maybe don’t... do what you did in the hall.”

“What, point out something bad is happening?”

Foggy sighs and rubs his neck. “Matt - we _all_ know it’s bad. But there’s no point being hurt for something everyone here knows. I mean, do you really think Saxon’s gonna have his mind changed by teenagers he despises? It’s just not gonna happen. For every one of you is a kid who leaves this place deathly afraid of their own powers, and that’s a job well done for Saxon.”

Matt pauses, hunched over himself. He knows it’s true, but his brain doesn’t work like that in the heat of the situation. “I guess I can underthink things sometimes.”

Foggy nods, his hair shifting against his shoulders. “Yeah, I got that vibe. I just have a really, _really_ bad feeling about this.”

“Like, mutant bad feeling, or just a general bad feeling?”

“Mutant bad feeling,” Foggy says with a shudder, then claps Matt on the back. “And if you don’t leave to shower now, you won’t have time.”

Matt sends him a grin and hears Foggy’s heart quicken ever so slightly in response. Cute.

 

* * *

 

Matt’s right. He isn’t the only child soldier in the building.

Frank Castle is a boy who radiates righteous fury, who smells of obsessively shined leather boots and sounds like he never moves without thinking it through first. Matt once overheard Frank be asked if he’s been to prison, the inane chatter of teenagers in the cafeteria drowned out by the man-boy’s roughly breaking voice.

“Yeah,” he grunts to the adrenaline-fuelled kid, high off talking to someone so clearly fucked up.

“Why?”

“Killed a couple people. Scumbags,” Frank says. Somehow, Matt thinks that ‘a couple’ is rounding down.

“Wow,” the kid says, a boy probably no older than thirteen by the sounds of it. “How long were you in for?”

“Only a couple years.”

“You killed a couple people and you were only in for a few years?”

Matt can sense Frank’s smirk; cocksure, something to make others scared. Matt’s own grin, repurposed. “They could only prove I did the one.”

Matt asks Foggy what he knows about Frank and he just shrugs, swallows his saltine crackers and says, “I dunno. I keep clear of him. He’s messed up.”

“Huh,” Matt hums.

“He once bit a kid’s ear off,” Foggy offers, like he’s disappointed at Matt’s reaction.

“Why?”

“I dunno,” Foggy says, breaking up another cracker once, twice. “Cause he’s messed up?”

Matt doesn’t believe that a guy like Frank does anything without good reason, so he decides to file that away for later, maybe speak to the guy. Foggy works as a friend, but Frank would be an ally. They aren’t always the same thing. Stick was an ally, not a friend (which Matt learnt the hard way, curled up and clutching that stupid bracelet as he tried to keep quiet when he cried) and the kids at the orphanage were friends, not allies (not an ounce of real loyalty between them and Matt; he was the jigsaw piece from another puzzle and they sensed it before he knew it himself, but camaraderie was inevitable in a place so hellish).

 

* * *

 

Matt, despite his tumultuous beginnings at Essex’s MRC, begins to settle into the routine of the place. He grits his teeth through the public punishments, which he finds out sometimes also vary to beatings and waterboarding, and that’s just what happens in public. He can hear screams and moans of pain from the basement, and he tries to tune it out because it does nothing good to him to listen in. It’s hell, it’s horrific, and he keeps his fucking head down as anger simmers in his heart. Foggy and he become quick friends and allies; united under the common goal of keeping alive and keeping their morals intact simultaneously.

They’re sitting in the courtyard, which Foggy describes as being reminiscent of the outdoor areas of prisons he sees on TV, “Where burly men work out and discuss gang-related stuff”. As it stands, Essex’s courtyard has a few benches, a couple basketball hoops and soccer goalposts painted onto one high brick wall. There’s also (unoccupied, for intimidation) short sentry posts dotted across the grounds and barbed wire over the outer borders. Matt hasn’t had a chance to play any sports since he was blinded - he could, but not without giving himself away - so he always had to sit out in gym class. He still can’t, not with teachers watching (he doesn’t want to give away the extent of what he can do), but he’ll often sneak out before curfew when the yard is open but quiet just to shoot some hoops and enjoy flexing his skills in a less violent way.

Foggy usually sits out, clearly embarrassed cause he is either unwilling or unable to play, but once, on a cold night before curfew where Matt can hear that the courtyard is basically abandoned, Matt offers to show him how. Foggy, with a little bit of friendly goading, drags himself away from his book and follows Matt out onto the quiet recess area. There’s a couple girls tucked away in the corner who chat quietly and it takes him a moment to realise that they’ve got some sort of fire going mid-air, a daring little rebellion given how strict Essex is about showing off mutations. Matt tunes them out as he bounces the ball a few times and shows Foggy the basics, just in case he doesn’t know and didn’t want to ask. Matt pretty quickly sheds his coat, but Foggy keeps his on.

Matt says, “Got a good feeling about this one?” as Foggy is about to line up to try shoot a hoop.

“Nope.” True to word, he misses. Matt throws a ball after him and it cleanly falls through the hoop. “I’m being beat at basketball by a blind boy,” Foggy scoffs, playing up his indignation.

“Don’t feel bad,” Matt says with a grin. “Anyways, it’s all just ball control.”

“I can handle balls fine,” Foggy mutters. “I’m just better with smaller ones.”

Matt pauses, the bursts into laughter that echoes off the brick walls, renewing his information about where he is in the space, not that he’d ever lost track. “Was that you coming out?”

“Do you know many straight guys who make ball-handling jokes?” Foggy shoots back, but his heart betrays him; it’s pounding rabbit-like in his chest.

Matt throws up his hands in modest surrender. “Alright, you got me.” Matt tosses him the ball. “What about this time - got a good feeling?”

“Uh, nope,” Foggy mumbles, clearly taken aback by Matt’s casual reaction, as if Matt hasn’t had to suffer through all of Foggy’s swooning heart-skips over boys and girls alike. Honestly, Foggy is hopeless. He aims, then throws the ball at the hoop, not tall enough to do a proper dunk. It teeters on the edge, then falls out, and Matt rushes forward to catch it once it bounces a couple times on the ground. “Ugh. I’m no good at this,” Foggy says, defeatedly.

“What, you think Michael Jordan was born dunking? C’mon.”

“I think I prefer softball, anyways.”

Matt dribbles the ball for no real reason, coming up into Foggy’s space. “Pussy,” he says jokingly, sticking his tongue out.

Foggy bursts out laughing, dodging out the way. “Don’t call me that. Vaginas are beautiful things.”

Matt snorts, rounds on Foggy again. “It’s _actually_ short for pusillanimous.”

“No it isn’t. That’s an urban myth.”

Matt stops. “Really?”

“Yeah. It doesn’t have any one agreed upon origin, but one explanation is that it’s linked to the demure attitude of a cat - puss - which is then linked to positive feminine attributes as far back as the 15th century. Then that’s was repurposed for effeminate traits men, because no one is allowed anything nice in this world.”

“Huh. How do you know that?

“Probably just read it somewhere.” Matt, in lieu of a response, throws the ball to the hoop without turning his head, then shoots him a shit-eating grin.

“Ugh, showoff,” Foggy groans, but Matt hears his heart palpitate and has the absurd thought that maybe he’s really into boys playing basketball, but then realises he probably just likes Matt’s smile or he flashed some of his happy trail or something. He’s not stupid - he’s aware that Foggy finds him attractive - but to act on that knowledge would put them both into an awkward and potentially dangerous situation. Plus, finding someone hot doesn’t always equal wanting to act on it, which he learnt the hard way at fourteen with a girl slapping him in a parking lot and calling him an idiot because she _literally has a boyfriend, Matt!_

“If you’re allowed to show off your knowledge of pussy, I’m allowed to excel at sports.”

“Yeah, but I think that one is generally considered cooler than the other,” Foggy says, picking his ball up off the ground.

Matt’s face scrunches up. “I don’t-- _which one_?”

“Sports? Unless you meant-- oh,” Foggy interrupts himself, then laughs. “It was a double entendre.”

“Get with the program, pal,” Matt says with a grin. “Alright. Got a good feeling?”

Foggy turns to the hoop, his sneakers scraping against the asphalt ground (a pleasing sound), and clicks his tongue quietly. “Hmm. Yeah. I do.”

“Well, don’t leave us all waiting, then.”

Foggy aims and does a running throw. The ball neatly falls through the hoop. Foggy whoops and they do what dissolves into a complicated improvisation of high-fives, like a secret handshake that kids do. Matt overhears one of the girls in the corner say, “They’re _way_ too into this,” and Matt can’t explain what has him in stitches until they’re back in the privacy of their room.

 

* * *

 

Within a month of being at Essex, Matt ends up in a fight, because of _course_ he does.

It all begins with a weasel of a kid called Owlsley who apparently literally _looks like an owl_. Matt asks if it’s a nickname that came about because of his mutation, but according to Foggy, it was just pure bad luck - it’s his real family name.

Anyways, the kid. He spits some nonsense Brotherhood shit in the cafeteria about mutants being far superior to normal humans, which is about passable for not getting a smack, but then he goes on to say (in sickening detail) how he’d segregate and slaughter non-mutants if he was in power. It rubs Matt the wrong way enough that he gives Owlsley a shove and tells him to shut the hell up, which escalates into a punch, which escalates again into an all-out brawl that has Matt’s fists covered in both of their blood. He just _can’t stop_ once he’s started, an ugly rage that fuels him forward, methodical in his destruction.

He’s dragged off the whimpering boy by Foggy, but Matt immediately goes back at it, managing to get in a few good punches until he’s physically restrained by two adults. Matt writhes and tries to throw them off, but one of them punches him in the stomach making all the air to rush out of his lungs. As he gasps for air, the simmering anger in his blood begins to settle and he realises how much he’s just screwed up. Foggy’s heart is pounding, and he’s exuding fear-alarm-adrenaline pheromones in his sweat. He’s scared of Matt, or scared _for_ him, and Matt isn’t sure which is worse.

The teachers haul him away, shoving him to his feet and away from the hall. Of course, he ends up once again in a cell in the basement.

It’s not the same cell, and he can tell that immediately. There’s a bloodstain a few months old that he finds on the floor when he scuffs the ground, that wasn’t there last time he was here. He listens out again, and frowns; something’s wrong, or different. Then he realises - he can sense a tiny, minute airflow in a crack in the wall. He finds it quickly, and smells a few different things. Firstly, dust, grime, plasticy insulation, but then pretty quickly the scent of an unfamiliar girl. Next door is occupied, then.

“Hello?” The heartbeat in the room next to him doesn’t pick up at all, so he tries again, louder. “Hello!?”

 _Hello_ , comes the response, loud and clear, making him trip over himself backwards in shock and fall onto the ground, smacking his head on the cot on his way down.

“What the fuck--?”

 _Oh, gosh, sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m Karen._ The voice is simultaneously timid and sure; wobbly, but resolute.

“Can you hear me?” Matt asks, rubbing the back of his head, then smelling his hand to double check he isn’t bleeding.

 _I can hear your thoughts,_ she says - or, rather, thinks at him?

Well _that’s_ not invasive at all, he thinks, then has a stumbling moment where he realises he might as well have just yelled that to her.

_It’s okay, I know. And whatever you’re thinking - I’ve seen worse, don’t worry._

“... Well now all I can think of is sex,” he grumbles after a moment.

He can’t so much as hear Karen’s laughter as much as he can sense it  - amusement that floats through her tether to him. _Don’t worry. I live with teenagers. Some people in here spent way too much time on the internet._

“You poor soul,” Matt says sympathetically.

_It’s not so bad, but I know an awful lot more than I’d like to about people’s fantasies. And there’s some really weird kinks out there._

Matt laughs and rests his head against the bed, shifting so he’s more comfortable on the floor. “I’m Matt, if you haven't already sensed that.”

_I had._

“Figures. What you in for, then?”

_That makes us sound like we’re in prison._

“You mean after all this time, I’m actually in a school?”

More bemusement floats through the link. _I cheated on tests via telepathy._

Matt shifts, surprised. “That’s _it_? ”

_We can’t all get into fistfights._

It’s a bit unsettling that she knows that before Matt told her. He wonders what else he’s inadvertently given away. Aloud, he says, “Not with that attitude.”

She finds that funny, but Matt hears his door click open. He thinks as loudly as he can, _I gotta go - I think I’m being taken away_ and hopes that’s enough, that he doesn’t need to actually say it out loud.

 _I’ll see you on the other side. Good luck,_ she replies, pushing a sense of good will through to him, making his heart swell with the feeling of _not being alone._ It’s stunningly bright and battles the crushing feeling of dread, but it evaporates when familiar boots approach him and drag him to his feet.

“Afternoon,” Matt says to the guards, and is rewarded for his smartassery with a smack across his face as he’s hauled once again to the tank.

 

* * *

 

Matt is dumped, shivering violently, on the floor of his and Foggy’s room. He clenches his jaw tightly enough that his teeth ache and Foggy silently hands him earphones again.

“Thanks,” he tries to say. He’s not sure how it comes out, but Foggy rubs him a couple of times on his bare shoulders, and helps him to his feet so he can curl up onto his bed. “Not scared of me?”

If Foggy responds, Matt can’t make it out above the din.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, Foggy?” Matt asks over their bland cafeteria food. He’d thought the orphanage was bad, but at least they had some sort of dedication to nutrition when they could afford it.

“Yeah?”

“How’d you end up in here anyways?” he asks, curiosity getting the better of him. Some kids boasted about what they did to end up at Essex, and some people didn’t say a word. Some people’s stories weren’t uncommon and interesting enough to tell - rejecting, frightened parents, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Foggy shrugs. “I don’t wanna talk about it. You?”

Matt pokes his food around his plate. “Yeah. Same.”

They eat in silence after that.

 

* * *

 

Over the next six months, Matt finds himself in the tank semi-frequently. Apparently he’s really fucking bad at keeping his head down - who knew?

Each time fries his nerves; he doesn’t get any more used to it, but he grins and bears it for two reasons. One, he can tell it _infuriates_ Saxon that he won’t give in, that he laughs on his way over there and refuses to ask for a break, even when he’s jumping like a live wire, even when they start to get more creative. They leave him in stress positions, cut him up, even break a couple fingers once, but it always leads back to the tank which smells of his own blood from where he’s dug his fingers into the flesh of his thigh, desperate for stimulation he can control. He’s got semi-permanent scabs there now.

Two, drawing attention to him stops other kids having attention on them. He’s a model student by most counts - work is handed in to a high standard, on time, even if he’s spent the last three days in the tank. When it suits him, he’s the demure, head-ducking blind boy from St. Agnes. When it doesn’t, he’s an argument machine, riling up teachers so that the attention is pulled away from the kid who just accidentally set something on fire and is trying to put it out before someone notices.

He finds Karen on the “outside”, and by that he means not in the dank basement that has become his home from home. She smells nice, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to tell other scents in the place once he’s become accustomed to them; clothes smell like the clothes he wears, food smells like the food he eats, and everything blends into a boring mush. He hasn’t been outside the MRC in months. Karen acts nice too, but there’s a subtle but fierce undercurrent of danger to her that makes Matt’s hair stick up on end if he dwells on it too long.

Karen becomes a friend to Foggy and Matt, and she introduces them to her little triumvirate; Frank, who seems to possess infinite gentleness when it came to Karen, and Marci, who flirts playfully with a stunned Foggy. What either of their mutations are is not immediately apparent, and they don’t seem to find it important to tell them. Matt and Foggy don’t ask. It seems taboo if they don’t want to tell.

Karen’s group’s dynamics are interesting - Frank and Marci are clearly more friends with Karen than they are with one another, but they never vie for her attention, rather working as a team to defend her, to make her laugh and be happy in such a hellish place. Their attachment to Karen borders on something so strong Matt’s only ever really seen it in romantic relationships; he does wonder about them, sometimes. They always smell of one another.

Frank nods when Matt introduces himself. “Yeah, I know you. Seen you around. You’re the idiot who keeps getting taken to isolation.”

“That’s me,” Matt says with a grin.

Frank grunts, his voice no more smooth than it had been when Matt’d first heard it all those months ago. “Keep up the good fight, Red,” he says, and that’s that. Frank is an ally, even if he makes up nicknames cause Matt’s ginger.

 

* * *

 

Once, the night warden, who is a gruff man who reminds Matt in a nauseating way of Stick, sneaks into one of the girl’s rooms at night. It’s a double room like Matt and Foggy’s, but only has one occupant.

The next day, the night porter is found in his own room, rattling through heavy breaths, pulp for a face. It’s only natural to link it back to the boy with scabbed, skinned knuckles.

The day after that, Matt floats in the tank and wonders why _he’s_ the one being punished.

 

* * *

 

Matt collapses into the bed, Foggy’s hands under his armpits to lift him, unflinching though he must be sweating horrendously. He palms Matt the earbuds again, and Matt puts them in gratefully.

“Foggy?” he mutters in a moment of lucidity, his head pounding.

“Yeah, buddy. I’m here.”

“Thank you,” Matt says. Foggy’s breath catches, and the sound is so fucking _loud_ that Matt groans and covers his ears, curling up pathetically as the static snow floods his head again.

 

* * *

 

Over breakfast the next day, Matt chews on bland cereal, his hands trembling and throbbing. Foggy keeps up a running monologue, making jokes and keeping up spirits. It’s infuriating because it’s so clearly a mask.

Matt slams down his spoon on the table, and Foggy’s charade about their religion class trails off. “Stop it. Stop trying to pretend like everything’s normal.”

Foggy doesn’t say anything for a moment, instead electing to stir his cereal, the plastic of both the spoon and the bowl making a dull clinking noise, cornflakes drifting into each other like icebergs. Matt tunes it out, and focuses on Foggy. “Beating up someone in the night isn’t exactly _abnormal_ for you, buddy.”

Matt runs a thumb over his bandaged knuckles and doesn’t understand. He licks his lips and rocks once, twice, his breathing coming sharp and short. “Why aren’t you scared of me?” he asks, before he can help it. He knows that his anger is explosive, dangerous, and he knows it once it’s passed. It doesn’t change a thing in the moment though. He remembers that cold look his Dad got in the ring and wonders if that’s what he looks like when he’s facing somebody off - determined, dead-set, gleaming with sweat and a thin spread of smeared blood that made his face look like it was a mask that was rusting.

“I don’t have to be,”  Foggy says. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Matt wants to warn Foggy that he’s dangerous, but he thinks Foggy already knows.

 

* * *

 

Matt doesn’t know what’s happening until it already is.

He’s sitting in assembly, waiting for Foggy to show up, and growing steadily more anxious that he isn’t there - until, eventually, he _is_ , being dragged through the aisle in the rows of seats. Matt’s caught breathless, a cold sweat immediately taking over him, his mouth drying and heart picking up. Foggy is exuding the chemical mix of alarm-fear-adrenaline that Matt’s become adept at singling out, his muscles contracting as he shakes, chains rattling - he’s handcuffed, Matt realises. Oh, _God_.

“Don’t do anything, Matt,” Matt hears, floating through the hush of the crowd. It’s probably completely inaudible to everyone but the two of them. “Please, just sit still,” Foggy begs.

Matt’s rage is twisting, disgusting and ugly. He tries to sit on his hands as Saxon begins his tirade, the words that make fear rear in his gut now.

Matt doesn’t even get halfway through.

He grabs a heavy Braille book from his bag and throws it directly at Saxon as he runs through the hall; it hits the man square on the nose, blood bursting into the air. As he runs, he senses something flying in his direction - a knife, chucked so it’s flat in front of him, not intending to hurt him. He plucks it out the air and just _knows_ it’s Frank’s and doesn’t even wonder why or how the man-boy got a knife. Matt grins wolfishly and he hears whispered, gleeful encouragement from Marci and Karen.

He throws the knife handle-first at the assistant on Foggy’s left and it lands squarely on their head - Foggy is begging him to turn back, but Matt can’t stop now. Matt leaps up onto the stage, scoops up his knife from the ground, and throws it blade-first at the other assistant, just to the side of their ear, banking she’d dodge and become overbalanced. She swerves and teeters, and it’s a short fight before Matt is surrounded by three bleeding adults, licking his own blood off his teeth. His glasses are knocked off his face and he heard them crack - whatever, he’s got spares.

“You’ll pay for this!” Saxon screeches, clutching his bleeding nose. Tiny particles of blood spray onto Matt’s Braille book.

“Sure, sir,” Matt says, picking up the knife and using it to cut the leather straps. “Hi,” he says almost shyly to Foggy, taking the other boy in; blood intermingled with saliva, acrid fear-sweat, shampoo and soap, baked potato and orange juice. The world falls away as Matt frees Foggy, limb by shaking limb.

“Matt,” Foggy breathes, his heart pounding.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Matt says, because a joke is all he can think of right now.

“Well, imply a teacher is having an affair in front of the class, get electrocuted, you know how it is.” Then, harder: “Matt! Look out!”

Matt becomes aware of the armed staff coming in as he’s aware of the dart in his back, the chemical stew inside the cartridge getting under his skin. “Shit,” he whispers. Stick would’ve killed him for not picking up on that. He tilts his head up to Foggy, who’s probably close to tears, gives him a sticky grin. “Got a good feeling?”

Foggy’s laugh is hopeless. “God, Matty--”

The world is spinning. The armed staff are closing in now, and whatever chemical they pumped into him is starting to make him feel woozy. “I’m really sorry,” he says. “I think I just got us into some shit.”

Foggy’s trembling hand lands on his face as Matt begins to slide out of consciousness. “Please don’t leave me,” he whimpers. Or, Matt thinks that’s what he’s saying.

But Matt’s too far gone to respond, his head slamming on the ground, the pain not even registering.

 

* * *

 

When Matt wakes up again, he’s already in the tank. Just as he’s given respite and he feels himself begin to drift off, he’s brought back into his skin with pain, with shocks that _must_ be stronger than ever before, they must. It’s that or he’s gotten less tolerant.

It lasts until he’s begging into his mask to be allowed to sleep, to recuperate.

Recuperation never comes.

 

* * *

 

When Matt wakes, he’s not even aware of having been asleep. He jerks up, scrambling against sheets that feel more like sandpaper than anything humane. Noises come clamorous, deafening. The other heartbeat in the room is pounding so loud Matt is sure other people _must_ be able to hear it amongst the sea of pulses in the building.

It’s Foggy, of course.

Matt groans and writhes away when Foggy tries to come over, his footsteps like thunderbolts down his spine. Vocal cords stretch and strum as Foggy says something to him, and he can’t make sense of it amongst the cacophony of other sounds.

Matt flails his hand out, and Foggy catches it as Matt descends again into blessed unconsciousness.

 

* * *

 

“Hey, Matt?” Foggy whispers across their room. It’s quiet and dark, probably about midnight, Matt’s senses having calmed down enough to act like a real human. He’s slept, eaten the protein bars that he hoarded (a habit left over from the orphanage; any food left in cupboards was fair game for thieving children), and he’s just been dozing for the past few hours, slowly coming back into his head and body. According to Foggy, he’s been away nearly four full days. He isn’t properly hungry yet, but his parasympathetic nervous system is only just coming back online, so he gives it a pass this one time.

“Yeah?”

“How _did_ you end up in here?”

Matt sighs, buries his face into his pillow. His voice is muffled. “I beat up a priest.”

Foggy laughs through his nose before he can help himself. “Seriously? Why?”

“He--” Matt swallows, but carries on with his voice bending under the strain of his memories. “He used to… Take this kid, make up excuses to be alone with him.” Pause. Rebalance. Pick yourself up and carry on. “He— he was _smart_. What he did, how he did it, it didn't leave a mark. Foggy, you should’ve heard the kid’s cries. He’d cry out for his mom, dad, God and Jesus and Mary and his patron saint. He didn’t get it-- why it was happening. I tried calling CPS, but everyone brushed it off, so it was dropped. I tried praying. I tried telling a nun. No one came to help him. So I did.”

“And then?”

“And then I didn’t have anywhere else to go. No living relatives who want me, no foster parents. This place said they’d take me in as a charity case. So. Here I am.”

Foggy doesn’t breathe for a good long moment, then inhales sharply. “Matt?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I hug you?”

Matt huffs and is secretly so, so glad Foggy asked, because Matt never would’ve initiated. “Sure, buddy,” he says nonchalantly, though rejection now would probably kill him.

Foggy slips out of his bed and nudges Matt over. It’s cramped on his narrow little cot, but Matt doesn’t mind at all. Foggy clambers in, the bed creaking under new weight, springs groaning, and then wraps his arms around Matt’s side. They both shuffle so they’re more comfortable, and end up with Foggy curled around Matt’s back with a hand tucked under Matt’s ribs, their legs carefully apart, as if that’d be the step too far.

“Why do you-- why do you fight so much?” Foggy whispers, his breath pleasant and hot on Matt’s neck. The scent of him is overpowering, probably an after effect from the tank, but Matt’s too used to sweat and other more disgusting smells to even be slightly bothered by it. It isn’t even gross, not really (and he knows he’s a goner when their gross smells aren’t even _that_ gross anymore - Matt’s been an idiot to think he could shut any of this down).

“I don’t know,” he replies, and it’s half true. “I don’t know. I just-- I get this _anger_ and I can’t stop it. It’s like a switch flicks in my head - one moment I’m Matt Murdock, and the next I’m just a ball of _rage_.”

Foggy nuzzles into the short hair at his nape. Foggy’s own hair must be tied back into a ponytail or plait, as it sometimes is, as it doesn’t make much noise at all. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Matt’s laugh is undercut with a thick sniff. “I-- No, Foggy. I think it’s just something that I am.” It’s such a small thing to admit, but something that’s been trailing around in his head since he heard that the Murdock boys got the Devil in them. It must be true, he thinks, because his anger is alien to him until he’s right in the eye of a storm of fury.

Foggy makes a soft, hurt noise, and squeezes him. His voice is low and teetering on the jagged edge of whispering. “You’re beautiful, you know that, right? Not broken.” And as if that wasn’t enough, he then adds, “And it’s okay to not be okay.”

He says it with such simple conviction, not a skip or waver in his heartbeat, and Matt’s composure is _gone_. He knows Foggy knows he’s crying and tries to push back on the shame he feels; it’s the first time he’s cried in front of someone else since he was blinded, clutching at his dad’s shirt and making big wet spots on it as he battled over the overwhelming _unfairness_ of it all. Foggy just holds him through it, not saying anything. They both know whatever he could come up with would be useless anyway.

Matt snuffles thickly, trying to get himself under control. “I’m sorry for leaving you,” he says. “Before. Why did you-- why did you say that about the teacher? You must’ve known you’d get hurt.”

“I dunno,” and then there’s a guilty silence. “I just… I was tired of it. Their self-righteous attitude, the bullying. And you’re constantly getting into trouble, so it’s not like you can talk.”

God, no, that’s all wrong. And worse - did Foggy act out because _Matt_ does? “Foggy, _no_. I’m fine getting hurt, but _you_ can’t.”

Foggy noses into Matt’s nape again, and it makes Matt’s scared guilt simmer down. “Why do you think you’re allowed to get hurt?”

Matt grimaces, sniffs, wipes his nose on the back of his hand. He lets the silence fall for long enough that he can change the subject, because he doesn’t have an answer. “Are _you_ okay?”

“I’m fine.” Heartbeat uptick. _Lying_.

“Sure?” Foggy nods, the sound not quite falling right or smooth, and Matt suddenly realises that something’s _off._

“What--?” Matt twists around in the bed so they’re facing each other, inches apart, and runs his hands up Foggy’s neck, and then instead of finding shoulder-length hair, his fingers run over soft, quarter-inch long hair. “Did they _shave your hair_?”

Foggy swallows. “Yeah,” he whispers.

Matt’s fury bursts into his head. He can’t believe it took him so long to realise - but then again, he wasn’t really looking out for changes, and he’s still a bit unbalanced from the tank. He’d just assumed it was tied back, like a fucking moron. “Those _bastards_ ,” and it doesn’t come out as strong as he wanted. It comes out helpless. Matt runs his hands from Foggy’s forehead to his crown, fingers splayed, then down to his nape.

“Matty,” Foggy says. “It’s fine. Please don’t do anything rash.” His glowering silence makes Foggy huff, “ _Matt_.”

“I promise I won’t burst into the teacher’s wing and assassinate Saxon in his sleep,” Matt says, a bit offended he even has to promise that.

“I never know with you,” Foggy mutters.

They lie there for a few moments. Matt shifts because he doesn’t know where to put all of his limbs, and he must have some sort of a confused look on his face because Foggy huffs and intertwines their legs, his thigh between Matt’s. It’s warm and comfortable; he could probably lie like this forever, he thinks. He runs his hands over Foggy’s broad brow, then the bridge of his slightly upturned nose, his fleshy cheeks and jaw. His face is a bit stubbly on his neck and sideburns - Foggy’s constantly complaining that Matt can grow a full beard at seventeen and Foggy is stuck with a patchy mess.

“Are you doing that face-touch thing?” Foggy asks, sounding a bit amused and fond.

“Yeah. Is that okay?” Matt places his hand gently over Foggy’s throat so he can feel the pleasing vibrations first hand.

“It’s fine,” Foggy says, twisting his head out of Matt’s pillow so it’s more accessible. He hears Foggy’s eyelids close, so he runs his thumbs over the thin, fluttering skin.

“Why are you here, Foggy?” he asks, wondering how something so soft could end up in a place like this.

Foggy’s eyes open, and Matt drops one hand palm up on the sheets, and the other he slides onto Foggy’s hip so his fingers are on his skin but his thumb is on his well-worn tee. He can just about feel the faint rivulets of fading stretch marks, sparse peach fuzz, and tiny bumps and irregularities that probably only he could pick up. “I predicted a gang rape to the degree of accuracy that the police assumed I must’ve been involved.”

“Jesus,” Matt says. “Was she…?”

“Yeah,” Foggy whispers, and swallows. “Yeah. She still got raped. I was arrested under suspicion of being an accomplice. My lawyer, who was possibly the freshest court-appointed sucker out there said it wasn’t looking good. I was given the option of come here until I get my GED or hit nineteen, go to prison for three years, or go to trial where I’d be steamrolled for being a mutant and end up in prison anyways. So I chose here.”

“Why would you-- why would you chose to be _here_?”

Foggy scoffs. “Matt, have you seen me? Don’t answer that, smartass. At the time I was a 5’3” chubby, soft-skinned chubby twink - if that’s a thing, anyways - who cried at _Frozen_. I knew I wouldn’t make it in juvie, I’d only have to be here a couple years, and I… I had a good feeling.”

“You had a good feeling,” Matt says back, running his hand lower to Foggy’s hip, gives him a tiny squeeze.

He can hear Foggy’s grin in his voice. “Yeah. I had a good feeling.”

 

* * *

 

The plan comes about, as most do, from jokes that quickly turn far too real. Before Matt knows it, they’ve got a vow to escape. They’re sitting in a tight circle in the yard, since it’s just about the only place they can be without being questioned, with books out on the benches like they’re studying.

“We’re not far from Vermont,” Karen says. “Really close, actually, the border is in Lake Champlain. My parents would put us up. I think, anyway.”

“Where are they exactly?” Foggy asks.

“St. Albans Bay.”

“So once we cross that’s about an hour and a half driving, or…” Foggy pauses, running the numbers. Matt’s still really not sure how Foggy’s mutation works, but then again, by all scientific reckoning, it should be impossible, too. He still seems to be able to do a lot more than simple knowledge, but he suspects that Foggy can calculate these things by simply thinking a number and seeing how confident he feels about it, if he doesn’t know something for sure. “Fifteen hours walking, maybe.”

“There’s a few State Parks we can hide in along the way, if we need to,” Karen says. Personally, Matt can’t think of anything worse than camping out in a forest, but desperate times, he supposes. “Should we contact them beforehand?”

Matt shakes his head. “There’s no way to know that the phones aren’t tapped. If anyone else found out her parents were preparing for us that they’d call the police.”

“Fuck the police,” Frank says. “We’ve got more than enough power between us to not get our asses handed to us.”

“It might be helpful now to tell us what your mutations are,” Matt points out. He’s got a pretty good idea for Frank given that impressive knife throw in the hall, but Marci is a total mystery.

The three of them look between each other. “I’ve got a good aim,” Frank says. Matt’s pretty sure from the snort Karen gives that it’s the understatement of the century. Still, good to have his suspicions confirmed, though he’d never let Frank use any kind of gun. He’d have to settle with throwing rocks like a caveman before Matt let them get done for armed assault.

“I’m a shapeshifter and mimic,” Marci says. It makes sense now why he never noticed her mutation - it’s not like he could sense differences in facial structure, and she wouldn’t be able to subtly flaunt it anyways. Shows of mutant power got shut down quickly.

Foggy’s mouth opens with a wet click. “Are you kidding? Like, what’s-her-name, Mystique?”

“Who the hell is Mystique?” Matt asks. The name rings a bell, but he’s not sure why.

“Wow, you really don’t keep up with the news, do you?” Foggy says, shaking his head. “She was the blue one who was wanted in connection to Magneto.”

Matt’s face scrunches up. “When was this?”

“Five years ago. Hm. I think it was in the news in the first couple of weeks of July 2012,” he says as if he’s actually uncertain.

“How the hell would I remember something from _five_ years ago?” he says crossly, and realises that Foggy probably doesn’t know that he didn’t have access to a TV or newspapers at the orphanage, and though he had a personal laptop given to him by his high school, many websites were blocked on their network and there wasn’t WiFi at home.

“ _Boys_ ,” Karen says, and the both of them shut up immediately. “Yes, like Mystique, but without the blue.”

“I can’t actually do that,” Marci adds. “Be abnormal colours - blues, greens. Just can’t do it. But any humans I’ve come into contact with are fair game.”

“Can you shapeshift their-- junk?” Foggy asks. Of course that’s the first thing his mind leaps to. “Like, I just want to know how all of this works, it’s kind of crazy--”

“I usually just fill in the blanks, Foggy Bear,” she says primly. Matt snorts.

“It doesn’t help us though. There’s bio-scanners at the doors,” Frank says.

Foggy hums. “Are there any hackers here?”

“Why do we have to go out the front door?” Matt asks immediately after.

“Matt, I know you’re blind, but you _are_ aware that the very high walls which are, I might add, _covered in barbed wire_ , and also have sentry posts?” Foggy says incredulously.

“They’re never occupied,” Matt tells them. “I mean, they are occasionally, but rarely. We’d just have to pick a quiet night.”

Karen makes a vague gesture. “Okay - but how do we get over them?”

“We go through them,” Frank says, like he’s already set on the idea. “Explosives.”

“ _No_ ,” Foggy says, a bit hysterically.

“I… actually kind of like that.” Marci says, her shark-like grin obvious in her voice. “Go out with a bang, so to speak.”

The idea grows on Matt quickly. “That could facilitate the escape of others, too.”

“Have you all gone _insane_?” Foggy asks, his neck working and shifting air as he looks between them. “It’s not exactly inconspicuous.”

“Is that what we’re really aiming for, though? If we can get away safely, then that’s enough. And we can - the staff here are incompetent. We could fight back.” Karen picks up a stone from the ground and flips it in her hand, thinking. “I think it’s a good idea - if you can get the materials for explosives, Frank.”

Matt notices how she doesn’t even question if Frank has the skill set, only if he can find the stuff he needs. It makes Matt giddy, but Foggy is sitting, arms crossed against his chest, displeasure obvious in how quiet he’s being. Matt reaches across to him, hand on his shoulder and whispers, “Got a good feeling?”

Foggy inhales sharply. Shakes his head. “Something’s going to go wrong,” Foggy says with certainty. “Most of it will go right - but _something_ will go wrong.”

“I’ll take those odds,” Matt says, giving Foggy a little smirk, because his heart totally gives him away when Matt smiles all cocksure.

 

* * *

 

It takes Frank three painful weeks to gather everything he needs, cobbled from stolen cleaning materials, classroom electronics, cooking supplies and things from the groundskeeper's shed. Matt actually properly manages to keep his head down this time, in part due to the fact he doesn’t want another incident where he leaves Foggy alone for so long, feeling incredibly guilty over that whole episode. Foggy doesn’t ask Matt to stay, and doesn’t act any more clingy than he did before, but Matt’s glued to his side anyways.

They pencil in for a Sunday night, hoping that it’s quiet enough for an escape. The night before, Matt and Foggy are quiet, hyper-aware that this will either be their last night of imprisonment, or their last night together. If this goes wrong, they’re sure to be split up. After Matt’s little show, everyone is well aware how close the two have become. They get taunted for it, occasionally, by peers and staff. Matt doesn’t care.

Foggy in particular seems comparably despondent and moody (AKA, little to no running commentary), so Matt crawls into his bed and wraps his arms around him. They haven’t made a habit of bed sharing, for fear of being caught out by occasional night checks if Matt fell asleep. This place is run on randomness, to make it more difficult to establish any foothold or carve any kind of security.

“You okay?” Matt asks.

“Scared,” Foggy mumbles after a moment.

“I know,” Matt says. “But you know we’ve got to follow through now, right? I can’t leave you here.”

A small noise cracks out of Foggy’s throat. “I know.” Matt lets out the air in his lungs and nudges Foggy’s hairline with his nose, hating that it kind of feels nice just by the merit of it being a pleasing sensation. He knows Foggy feels self-conscious without his hair; he used it to hide his face, even if he’d never admit that. But Matt’s always had a weird thing for good textures that he tries hard not to indulge in, because Stick said it was pathetic. But Foggy brings it out of him, handing him things to touch on the rare occasion something new comes into the MRC and eating the bad-texture foods for him so Matt wouldn’t be told off for being wasteful. Foggy turns around so they’re facing each other and whispers, “I’m having a lot of feelings right now.”

Matt raises his eyebrows. “Um? Okay.”

Foggy just huffs a laugh and touches Matt’s bottom lip with his thumb. “I have a good feeling about us.”

“Good,” Matt says. Both their hearts are pounding. He knew this moment would happen eventually because they’ve been circling around it for _months_ , never quite knowing when _the_ time was, when they could be them without worry. “I have a good feeling too.” He knows it’s a bit lame, and Foggy snickers. “Yeah, I know how that sounded, thank you Captain Innuendo.”

Matt reaches out so he can touch Foggy’s grin, then shuffles forward so they’re only an inch or two apart and there’s a moment of breathtaking electricity before Foggy surges forward and kisses him. He _loves_ kissing, but it quickly turns desperate with Foggy licking into his mouth and clutching him tightly. Matt’s not exactly complaining, but once he settles into the fact that _Foggy is kissing him_ , it does leave him a bit confused as to why Foggy’s acting so... off.

Foggy pulls away to breathe into Matt’s neck, presses his wet lips into Matt’s overheating skin. “I think something terrible is going to happen tomorrow.”

Matt kisses Foggy on the forehead. Dread settles into his stomach, but he hates the idea of Foggy worrying. “You’ve been wrong before.”

Foggy shakes his head. He doesn’t believe it.

“Well… Can you be any more specific?”

“No, and that’s what’s driving me _nuts_. I usually have a clearer idea if I _really_ want it, but I guess…” Foggy’s voice cuts into helplessness. “I guess I can’t _always_ , but this is important. I just don’t like it.”

“Well, I’ve spent every other week with my abilities on the fritz, so I’m sure it’s just a fluke,” he lies. In actuality, he’s getting worried too. Foggy isn’t usually wrong.

“Yeah,” Foggy says quietly. He kisses Matt again, and they just do that for a while, basking in the only certain thing they can get their hands on.

 

* * *

 

The next evening, they all sneak into the library at 1 AM, dressed in black with stolen water bottles and dry foods in their backpacks. They have about fifty dollars between them and enough grim determination to fuel an army. The library is the only room they can easily get to without what Marci cheerfully calls ‘suicide latches’ on the windows because it’s the oldest part of the frankenbuilding, and on the ground floor. They clamber through the windows and out into the quiet grounds.

Matt listens out. No guards in the squat towers. He grins and motions them all forward.

The grounds aren’t particularly large, and they cross them quickly, keeping low for fear of the night warden seeing them on his patrol. They reach the furthest wall, which is swallowed by trees. Frank goes about setting the explosives, which he assures them will be more than enough to make a dent in the wall. Everyone’s heartbeats are in overdrive, except Frank, who seems to be his calmest when he’s got something with potential destructive force in his hands.

Eventually, Frank stands back to observe his handiwork. Matt can smell the toxic chemicals, and wonders if the others can too.

“ _... some kids on the outer perimeter_ ,” he suddenly hears, cutting through the ambient haze. It’s the grizzly voice of the night warden, who’s been back on the job for a few weeks now. He hasn’t tried anything again since that night with Matt.

“Shit,” Matt hisses. “We’ve been spotted.”

“Fuck,” Karen breathes.

“I’m gonna start the timer,” Frank says.

“Can you not just make it go off?” Foggy asks, who’s practically having an anxiety attack.

“Didn’t plan for a remote charge,” Frank explains. “Thought we’d have time.”

“How long’s the timer?” Marci asks.

“A minute, starting…” Frank presses a couple buttons. “Now.”

They scurry off to crouch behind a watchtower. Matt can hear footsteps; multiple pairs. The growing smell of gun oil and metal, radio chatter. Jesus. “We’re not gonna be alone long.”

“Cover your ears,” Frank says.

They all do as they’re told as a three catastrophic _BOOMS_ crack through the air in rapid succession. Matt gasps, his ears ringing - delicately, he dabs his ear canal on the left side and finds it slick with blood. Foggy’s saying something, and it slowly filters in that he’s being jostled to move.

Scrambling up and hearing returning to his right ear, they sprint over to the smouldering hole in the wall. The explosion scooped up some of the dirt around it, creating a smoking boulder in the ground. Matt clicks his tongue to get a better feel for it, but then--

“Stop where you are!”

It’s Saxon. Saxon. Fucking _Saxon_.

He’s flanked by two staff members, who are holding guns. Real guns - not tranq ones. Shit. It’s suddenly urgent to Matt that even if _he_ doesn’t get out, Foggy and the rest _have_ to. All of this cannot be for waste. Saxon has probably called for backups from the rest of the security team, so it’s just a case of keeping them fended off so the others can make it.

“I’ll handle this,” Matt hisses. “Go. Go!”

“Like hell, Red,” Frank tells him.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Saxon says. “Shoot if they move.”

All five of them stand stock still. Saxon is confident, sure that because he’s got guns he’s going to win.

Matt can’t _wait_ to break the news.

 _Karen_ , he thinks, urgently and loud.

 _Yeah?_ she sends back.

_Tell them all to get down._

_Matt, no--_

Matt scoops up a piece of wall debris and throws it, hard as he can, at the head of the guy on Saxon’s left. It’s a great throw, and the guy crumples, immediately unconscious. The guy on the right clicks off his safety latch and the explosive crack of his gun echoes through the grounds, the bullet flying to where Matt had been mere moments ago. Matt snarls at the noise and swerves, then does a roll and barrels into his legs, swiping them out from under him.

“ _Get him!_ ” Saxon screeches.

They tousle on the grass. It’s a difficult fight, one he’s about to lose, until Frank swans into his radar and hauls the guy off them. Then it’s a simple knock to the back of the head with a piece of brick, and he’s out like a light.

And then there’s  _Saxon._

Matt rounds on him, breathing through his nose, head bowed as he listens intensely. Saxon has picked up a gun and clutches it in trembling hands, his fear-sweat catching up Matt’s nose. He’s disgusting, barely even a human, like a parasite feeding off fear.

“No, Red,” Frank says softly. Matt hears it but does not comprehend. His mind is swallowed by roaring flames that bite his heels and sound like Stick and whisper _go on, Matty, go on. What are you afraid of?_

He grabs a smaller chunk of rock and flings it at the cowering man, dodges a shot he knew Saxon would make before the man knew it himself, the twitch of a finger and a bracing inhale. Matt leaps and kicks him in the throat, and follows the momentum through so he’s braced over the man’s stomach, raining down punches before he can even think about it.

He hears a _snap!_ and it’s Saxon’s nose. _Snap!_ and it’s one of Matt’s knuckles.

“Matt, _no!_ ” comes a desperate scream he barely registers. He just _keeps going_ , his fury unstoppable. “You’re gonna kill him!”

It’s Foggy, but Matt can’t stop now. Not when he’s got such a disgusting man under him, bursting bloody spit bubbles in the corners of his mouth as he begs.

“What was it you always say? That last little bit before you torture _children_?” Matt snarls, grabbing him by the thin material of his t-shirt. Matt takes a great amount of pleasure in knowing that their little escape probably woke him up from a peaceful sleep, because this man could sleep at night.

Saxon whimpers. “I don’t know what--”

Matt backhands him. “ _Yes you do!_ ”

Saxon tries to breathe through his nose, even Matt can tell it’s too blocked with flowing blood, so his breath comes shaky through his mouth. “B-- Blessed are the wicked,” he whispers, “who are healed by my hand.”

“Red, he’s had enough,” Frank says, his voice masquerading as calm. “Stop this. You’re no killer and we _don’t have time_.”

Matt laughs and says, “This man has _never_ had enough, and he will _never repent_.” He leans in close to Saxon, so they’re mere inches apart. Matt can taste blood in his mouth, can smell it rolling off him and Saxon in heated waves. He _basks_ in it. “You hear that? You’re going to Hell, just like the rest of us.”

_Amen, amen, amen._

Saxon’s eyes flutter closed, his body beginning to shut down. Matt grabs a handful of his thin hair and smacks his head down onto the ground, then scrabbles to find a piece of brick, and smashes it down on Saxon’s forehead. He wishes he had a knife, so he could scalp him for what he did to Foggy, but he has to make do.

But then Matt is being hauled off Saxon, his collar digging into his throat as he’s pulled away from the man who’s fallen silent but not _dead_ , not _yet_. Matt howls at the indignity and blindly swipes out, taking Frank by surprise and making him let go, and then he’s back on Saxon. Karen replaces the hazy form of Frank, and something in Matt wants her to turn away but he knows she’s seen worse in the minds of man. All the the despicable people she’s around here must be like wading through a cesspool.

She doesn’t touch him, but her mind comes in like a tide over his, pressing his tyrant rage down, down, down. Matt’s hands falter as they’re about to fall again on the headteacher’s pummeled, mushy face.

 _It’s okay, Matt_ , Karen says to him, and then Matt is being pushed, kicking and screaming, into unconsciousness.

 

* * *

 

When he eventually wakes up, he can hear the sound of gently lapping water. It’s peaceful and calming, the fresh scent of nature beautiful after so much time surrounded by stale and artificial smells, until pain shoots up his wrists and drags him unwilling into reality.

He groans in pain, trying to rock away from it, and Foggy scrambles next to him. “Jesus, Matt. You had me so worried. You okay?”

Matt laughs because he can’t believe that Foggy’s still here, still with him, and it causes another wave of dull aching to spread through him. “I’m good,” he says, reaching gingerly to touch at his left ear, finding it crusted with blood. Everything sounds a bit off-kilter, but it’s better than it was right after it happened, so he hopes that means it’ll all end up okay. “How’re you?”

Foggy’s exhale is a laugh. “Yeah, Matty. I’m good. Want some water?”

Matt nods and Foggy cradles his head, letting a few sips of water drip down his dry throat. Matt can sense Karen and Marci, and the smell of salt-bacteria tears. No Frank, he realises with a jolt. “What happened?”

“Karen, she did some… I don’t know, telepath magic, knocked you out.” Foggy is hesitant, places a hand on Matt’s chest like he’s worried he’ll bolt. “Frank shot Saxon with his own gun and carried you to the dock where we stole a boat to cross into Vermont. Then Frank left, cause… well, he shot a guy. He said that he'll contact us when it dies down.”

It’s... anticlimactic. Matt doesn’t know how he feels about it all. He clings onto the dogma that no one deserves to die, but at the same time, Saxon begging under him was satisfying to the point where it scares him now the anger’s gone. He wonders if he would’ve actually gone through with it, and he wonders if it would’ve felt good. “And he’s definitely...?”

Foggy nods. “Definitely. Frank shot him in the head.”

He squeezes his eyes shut and swallows thickly. “Where are we?”

“West of Shelburne, by Lake Champlain,” Foggy says. “We’re safe.”

“Yeah?” Matt says, smiling crookedly, opening his eyes again. Foggy’s heart palpitates slightly, and Matt can hear the wet sound of his mouth shifting into a smile in response. “Got a good feeling?”

Foggy’s breath hitches and then he chuckles, kisses Matt on his forehead. He smells of lakewater and like he’s been petting Matt’s hair while he was out, oils on his fingertips. “Yeah, buddy. I’ve got a great feeling.”

 

* * *

 

**EPILOGUE**

 

When Karen’s parents see the four of them, stumbling up their drive three days later, they hold her and don’t let go for minutes. It turns out Karen was at Essex as court-mandated punishment, like Foggy, because she tried to kill the drunk driver who killed her brother in a car crash. _Yeah,_ Matt thinks, _that’s the danger I felt_ , and Karen breathes a short-lived laugh.

They’re ushered into the lakeside house, smelling of old wood and of freshly baked bread. Matt devours a half a slice with Foggy giggling at him before he remembers to butter it, but he’s just so _glad_ to finally eat something other than the bland mush they were fed at Essex. After they all shower and eat some delicious soup, sleeping arrangements are made since they’re all nodding off into their bowls. Matt and Foggy collapse onto an airbed, curling up into one another because they can fall asleep like this and it _doesn’t matter_. There’s no night warden, no Saxon, and nothing to stop them.

But after so long vigilant, Matt can’t let himself wind down in the lulled quiet of the house despite being exhausted. He tries not to toss and turn much, very aware that he’ll disturb Foggy. Eventually, he sighs defeatedly, gets up and wanders out back, taking his cane with him so he doesn’t have to think as much, walking barefoot through their yard and enjoying the feeling of the grass until he hits the rocky shore of the lake. The pebbles are uncomfortable under his feet, sore from walking so far the past few days. But the thought of putting on his worn-down trainers again makes him grimace, so he deals.

He taps his cane against the dry rocks a couple times, tilting his head. The sound doesn’t bounce back from what’s in front of him. Usually, he doesn’t like being so out in the open where he can’t sense what’s on the other end, but this time he gives it a pass. What’s ahead may be uncertain, but as far as he’s concerned, his freedom might as well be infinite.

**Author's Note:**

> The Bible verse is a cut down and a bit edited Job 22.
> 
> So Essex in Deadpool doesn't actually refer to the town Essex in NY state, but since I didn't know that until halfway through, I just carried on lol. Oh well!
> 
> Recommended listening:  
> \- Moon Eclipsed the Sun - Evolflo  
> \- say Amen (Saturday Night) - P!atd  
> \- Binary Mind - Ra Ra Riot  
> \- Go Out Fighting - Dr Dog  
> \- Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear
> 
> Catch me on tumblr: http://sleepymoritz.tumblr.com! All comments and concrit are very welcome.


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